Art for Life's Sake

April 24 – June 12, 2021

We proudly present our inaugural exhibition with a group of artists, modern and contemporary, who embody the spirit of our enterprise.

With ‘Art for Life’s Sake’, April in Paris will demonstrate its vision of presenting historical and contemporary art together, providing the opportunity to explore undiscovered links and unexpected details. Thus, the exhibition builds a bridge between familiar appearances and new experiences.  As described by Hartmut Rosa in Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World (2019), in these modern times of acceleration, allowing yourself to be open to art creates the opportunity for a deeply meaningful encounter that results in a real connection to the world, something he calls ‘resonance’. In the light and comfortable space of the gallery, one can pause and open up to the sublime. Often poetic, intelligent, and beautiful, the works in the exhibition ‘Art for Life’s Sake’ linger between romantic gazes, expressive three-dimensional manifestations and colorful surrealistic atmospheres.

Édouard Vuillard | Nature Morte avec Leda | 1902 | oil on board | 60 x 79.5 cm

Vuillard lived his whole life in a series of modest, unassuming Paris interiors that he shared with his grandmother, his widowed mother, and elder sister and brother. His work was a record of these interiors, often including his mother (his muse), or in this case Leda, a sculpture by his friend Maillol.

 

Sophy Naess | Self portrait with fruit | 2015 | Hand painted and hand woven cotton and wool fibers | 127 x 45 cm

“The circumstances I find myself in are naturally going to influence what ends up in my digestive system. Needs and desires fluctuate. So – the changing conditions of being in the world, I’d say. And play is important means of stomaching it all.”

Sophy Naess is an American artist, from El Paso, Texas, based in Brooklyn.

1. Sophy Naess | Sketch for Instabile #8 after Kees Van Dongen | 2019 | Colored pencil on collograph on rice paper | 28 x 20 cm

2. Sophy Naess | Sketch for Instabile #4 | 2019 | Watercolor on collograph on rice paper | 28 x 20 cm

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l. Aristide Maillol | Femme Assise | 1900 | terracotta | 21.5 x 9 x 12 cm

r. Aristide Maillol | Jeune Fille Couchée | 1912 | terracotta | 18 cm x 34 x 11 cm

Two clock-faces are staring at each other.
They are two sides of one thing, as different as they are the same.
They move as two bodies revolving around each other, into a tender embrace.
A kiss, made of time, in time.
Mirrored shape shifters, their hour-numbers climbing on each other’s shoulders.
Running up against the limits of their own usefulness, clocklikeness.

Katja Mater | Time is an Arrow, Error | 2020

Katja Mater | Time is an Arrow, Error (clockwise from top left) 65 Ed. 4/5, 13 Ed. 3/5, 8 Ed. 4/5, and  36 Ed. 2/5 | 2020 | each work is two C-prints mounted on aluminum, framed

 

Michael Dean | ha ha ha ha ha ha (working title) | 2013 | concrete and glue | 66 x 25 x 20 cm
“I come from the moon.”
— Adolphe Monticelli
Le Pêcheur | Adolphe Monticelli | oil on panel | 40 x 53 cm | ca. 1880
Pieter Laurens Mol | Krenten Kosmos | 1969 | conté-pencil and opaque paint (white) on paper | 21 x 29.7 cm
Pieter Laurens Mol | Kleine Krentenkosmos | 1969 | currants, nylon fishing thread, beechwood pens. varnish on wood box | 22.5 x 42 x 16.5 cm
Cluster of works by JCJ Vanderheyden

Vanderheyden’s works rejected the self-involvement of abstract expressionism which dominated the art scene around him. One day he divided a small canvas into two halves, a partition between black and white. From this he took the fundamental principles of painting as his primary theme. He adopted a style in which no residue of the artist’s subjectivity was visible and focused on a repertoire of a limited number of abstract forms, namely the grid, the frame, the gate, and the partition of top and bottom. He dealt only with the organisation of the pictorial space and the investigation of painting itself.

“I made it, it doesn’t matter when”
— JCJ Vanderheyden

Untitled

Untitled (The Quality of Yellow)

Untitled (Horizon)

Art for Life’s Sake

Art for Life’s Sake

Eric Wesley | 2 Legit | 2000 | mixed media | 15 x 30 cm

1. Sophy Naess | 1862 Cornelia Street | 2020 | oil on canvas | 35 x 27 cm

2. Adolphe Gottlieb | Untitled | ca. 1940 | oil on canvas mounted on board | 44.5 x 30 cm

Arthur Wesley Dow | House in Landscape | 1890 | oil on linen | 30 x 50 cm

The internationally renowned artists featured in the exhibition span generations and places, and whose juxtaposition reveals thought-provoking parallels. One example is a magical landscape painting of a small house silhouetted by twilight by Arthur Wesley Dow, who is attributed with starting the modernist movement in America. His method, founded on eastern philosophy and intuition, is juxtaposed with a photograph of the north pole’s midnight horizon by JCJ Vanderheyden, who’s work focuses on the infinite nature of the universe.

Rataplan | Moedervlek | SUN and PLM, 2002 | page 119

l. Pieter Laurens Mol | Vijf Lichten in de Put / Five lights in a put  | 1969 – 1970 | oil paint on wood panel with relief surface contained in a steep frame | 41.3 x 38 x 5 cm

r. Pieter Laurens Mol | Our Sun is Growing Old (Reporting Rooster) | 2017 | oil paint on paper | 32.6 x 22.1 cm

 

Pieter Laurens Mol | Interieur van de Schimmelmachine / Interior of the Mold Machine | 1967 | pencil drawing in Indian ink on paper | 29.6 x 42 cm

Pieter Laurens Mol | Voorstudie Kelderschimmels | Sketch for Cellar Mold 1967 | pencil and colored pencil on photographically reproduced ink drawing and sticker on cardboard | 22.9 x 32.5 cm

From Salvo’s gem colored formal landscape compositions and Dottori’s Futurist Areopicturas, abstracted paintings based on an aerial view of his native Umbria, to the hyper-saturated photographs of relics by Frick & Bell, a Canadian Artist duo living in Berlin.

In this series, symbolically-charged objects, ranging from specifically designed tools and repurposed items to healing instruments associated with the New Age movement, as well as indigenous ceremonial implements, are arranged in the manner of a still life.

 

1. Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick | Crystal Table | 2017 archival pigment print framed| 70 x 50 cm Ed. 1/3

2. Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick | Etheric Vehicle | 2017 | archival pigment print framed | 70 x 50 cm Ed. 1/3

Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick | Circuits and Psyche | 2019 | archival pigment print framed | 80 x 65 cm | Ed. 1/3

Pieter Laurens Mol | Schimmelmachine /Mold machine | 1967 | electric victrola motor, light bulb, oil paint on polystyrene, tin toy top, plaster and whiskers, sky blue silk fibers glued on metal wire on a painted wooden base (A)

pencil drawing on cardboard in painted ramin wood frame (B)

124 x 44 x 33,7 cm (object size A)

43,5 x 59,5 cm (frame size B)

 

“This machine works at any time, no difference whatever between on and off”
— Pieter Laurens Mol

Clemence La Tour du Pin visited the historic hotel Vic de Pontgibaud in 2019, which was owned by her family since the 1830’s. Her family’s history took place between those material walls yet the stories were shrouded in mystery. She became interested in how the present is shaped by the past, in how history is not linear but instead made up of an endless network of half forgotten stories.

Clemence de La Tour du Pin | Green Mummy | 2019 | mixed media | 80 x 42 x 12 cm
Clémence de la Tour du Pin | Endormies dans la poussière 2020 | mixed media | 120 x 45 x 15 cm

The layered pieces of antique cloth and feathers of Clémence de la Tour du Pin’s shadow box evoke the same ethereal quality as the oil paintings on mahogany furniture panel pieces by Adolphe Monticelli, a ground breaking late 19th century painter from Marseille.

1. Ardengo Soffici | Lidia | oil on canvas | 59 x 42 cm

2. Arturo Martini | Gli Amanti | 1941 | Bronze and wood | 43 x 30 x 24 cm

Anders Dickson | Time Drops | 2021 | Watercolor on paper | 30 x 44 cm
Anders Dickson | Shingles / Sickness and Curfew | 2020 | Watercolor on paper | 30 x 44 cm

“With the use of colors I try to dictate an environment that evokes a certain emotion in the viewer. I point in a certain direction, but do not say explicitly what the destination is…”

William Leavitt | Silhouetted Branches | 1998 | oil on canvas | 91.5 x 152 cm
l. Jean Brusselmans | Bord de mer | 1937 | Pencil and colored pencil on paper | 25,5 x 34,5 cm r. George Grosz | Wellfleet | 1940 | watercolor, gouache and ink on paper | 34.5 x 42 cm
From top to bottom : 1. Comet Collection | Pieter Laurens Mol | 1994 | watercolor and dispersion paint on paper | 29.8 x 39.8 cm 2. Fautrier | Nu informal | ca. 1944 | gouache | 24 x 28.5 cm 3. Afra Eisma | Kettle Bell | 2019 | glazed ceramic | ca 30 x 30 x 30 cm

Afra Eisma | Tongue Cabinet |
2017 | glazed ceramic

 

Eisma’s work is a gateway to a ‘bizarro’ world, a parallel universe overtly bursting with energy and bright colors, yet sometimes gloomy and grotesque.

1. Karel Appel | Dieren op Blauwgroen Fond (Animals on Blue-Green Background) | ca. 1948 | 40.3 x 30 cm

2. Afra Eisma | The Cave | 2019 | glazed ceramic | 22.5 x 28 cm

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Salvo | Senza Titolo | 1980 | oil on canvas | 30 x 24 cm

The exhibition will be running from 24 April 2021 until 12 June 2021 at April in Paris in Aerdenhout (Schulpweg 14) and can be visited by appointment only from Wednesday through Saturday between 11 am to 5 pm. You can book online via our website, by email at info@aprilinparisfinearts.com or by phone +31(0) 6 42146102. For all enquiries please contact Maria Tanbourgi per email at maria@aprilinparisfinearts.com

‘Art for Life’s Sake’ also features further artworks by Karel Appel, Jean Brusselmans, Corneille, Michael Dean, Anders Dickson, Afra Eisma, Jean Fautrier, Adolph Gottlieb, George Grosz, William Leavitt, Mario Mafai, Aristide Maillol, Sophy Naess, Katja Mater, Pieter Laurens Mol, Ardengo Soffici, JCJ Vanderheyden, and Édouard Vuillard.